White House Announces Actions On Patents

The White House today announced measures that it said will advance its battle against “patent trolls”, and urged Congress to pass patent reform legislation toward the effort. And the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued a statement on its work in support of the executive actions.

“[T]he Administration today is announcing major progress on a series of initiatives designed to combat patent trolls and further strengthen our patent system and foster innovation; issuing new executive actions to build on these efforts; and renewing its call on Congress to finish the job by passing common-sense patent reform legislation,” it said in a fact sheet.

The White House called innovation the “lifeblood” of the US economy, and announced three new executive actions. The new actions are: “crowdsourcing prior art; more robust technical training; and pro bono and pro se assistance.

Meanwhile, the USPTO today highlighted work it is doing to support executive actions taken by President Obama aimed at improving the patent system.

The USPTO announcement was made by recently appointed Deputy USPTO Director Michelle Lee.

Lee’s remarks, along with the work the USPTO is doing to carry out the President’s four executive actions, are available here.

The four previous executive actions taken over the past year are:

• Executive Action 1: Attributable Patent Ownership (formerly “Real Party in Interest”)
• Executive Action 2: Clarity in Patent Claims (formerly “Tightening Functional Claiming”)
• Executive Action 3: Empowering Downstream Users
• Executive Action 4: Expanded Outreach and Focused Study